“Being bad is so much more fun, don’t you think?” He tilted his head in question, his eyes crinkling again around the corners before he lifted the menu and broke their contact.
She kept her gaze locked on him, even though she could no longer see his face. She was content to take in the way the cords of his finely muscled arms moved when he drummed his fingers across the back of the menu, or looking at the bottom half of the cross tattoo as it peeked out beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. Well, her brother’s t-shirt. She had given him a shirt to wear, but he chose to wear the jeans he had on last night, claiming they were ‘mostly’ dry. She was remembering how good his butt looked in those jeans when he plopped his menu flat on the table.
“You gonna order off the menu, or do you have something else in mind?” He cocked his head, a wicked grin on hisface.
“Of course, I’m ordering off the menu. What else is there?” She decided to play dumb and not feed his ego, grabbing the menu out from under his hands and readingit.
“Uh-huh, whatever you say.” He chuckled and sighed in relief when a waitress appeared with a pot of hot coffee and two mugs in herhand.
“Coffee?” She set the mugs down on the table as she asked.
“Yes!” They both answered in unison and reached for amug.
“Rough night? Storm got pretty bad for a while.” The waitress, whose name tag read Tilly, moved to fill both their mugs with hot, steamy, liquid caffeine.
Hope and Gage shared a quick look across the table, both smiling a bit shyly, before he responded. “Nope. Wasn’t too bad at all. Pretty good, actually.”
“Well, I guess you both got lucky then, huh?” Tilly pulled some creamers out of her apron and plopped them on the table betweenthem.
Gage looked directly at Hope as he answered, his gaze dark, “Yep, I suredid.”
“You two know what you’d like?” She set the coffee pot down on the table and pulled a pen and pad out of her magical supply apron, ready to jot down their orders.
“You know what you want?” He moved his hand to gesture toward Hope. “Ladies first.”
She smiled at him while shaking her head at his bravado and then turned her attention to Tilly. “I’ll have the Sunrise Special, over easy, wheat toast please.”
“You want any meat with that? We’ve got bacon, sausage, ham, or steak.”
“Bacon would be great. Thanks.”
Tilly turned her attention to Gage. “What about you, handsome?”
“I’ll have the same, but I’ll take sausage, please. And I’d like a glass of orange juice.”
“You got it.” Tilly turned to leave. “Be back in a jiff. Just shout if you need something.”
“Thank you,” they said in unison again. They shook their heads in light laughter at their repeated ‘jinx’ and then each took a mug of coffee. He drank his as it was, hot and black, humming in appreciation after a deep sip. She emptied in her third creamer, after putting two sugars in, before stirring and finally bringing the mug to herlips.
“Can you even taste the coffee?” he asked sarcastically.
A frown brought the curve of her lips downward. “Oh, hush up. I like a little flavor in my coffee, you big brute.”
“I see that.” He chuckled and took another long sip from his mug. She watched his eyes follow the trail of her gaze to the tattoo on his arm before he looked back at her, eyebrows raised. “Don’t like the tattoo?”
She shook her head quickly. “No! That’s not it at all. Don’t laugh, but I’ve actually never dated anyone that’s had one before.”
He chuckled at her flustered statement. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? You do seem a little… uptown?”
She scrunched up her nose. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I live in the city, just likeyou.”
“I’m sure you live in a neighborhood a lot nicer than mine, though, right?”
She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly in response. “I like it.” He looked at her curiously. “The tattoo,” she clarified, pointing to his arm. “Well, tattoos. What do theymean?”
He looked down at his arm and, using his opposite hand, scrunched the material of the sleeve up so she could see the entire Celtic cross on his upper arm. “Well, in case it wasn’t obvious by my name, or dark hair and green eyes, I’m Irish.” He looked up at her then and waggled his eyebrows.
“That much I figured out,” she responded wryly. “What about the swirly one on your other arm and chest?”